David Engelthaler, Ph.D.

David Engelthaler is the Director and Professor at TGen North, and is a Director of TGen’s Division of Immunology and Microbial Genomics. TGen North focuses on pathogen genomics with a specific mission to advance clinical medicine, public health, and biodefense. Dave is also co-appointed as the Executive Director of the Health Observatory at ASU. During the recent pandemic, Dave oversaw the rapid development of TGen’s FDA-allowed COVID-19 diagnostic test, the creation of a federally-licensed diagnostic laboratory, and the institution of the AZ COVID sequencing reference laboratory—all in support of Arizona’s public health and healthcare response.

Just prior to the pandemic, Dave was overseeing research projects involving advancing our understanding of multi-drug resistant infections, development of novel genotyping techniques for genomic epidemiology and microbial forensics, fungal epidemiology and phylogenetics, and more. A major focus of this works involves adapting and advancing the use of next-generation sequencing tools for infectious disease research and healthcare. Dave also oversees the application of the above research in real-life disease outbreak investigations, both natural and human-caused. Recently, Dave led investigations involving invasive Group A Strep in the Southwest, Cryptococcosis emergence in the Pacific Northwest, a multi-state fatal fungal meningitis outbreak associated with contaminated medical products, and many other disease investigations.

Dave is leading teams that have developed revolutionary techniques to detect extremely low-level subpopulations of resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in patients. Similar approaches are being applied to develop the next generation of tests for hospitals and clinicians to rapidly identify critical multi-drug resistant organisms that result in tens of thousands of deaths in the US every year. 

Prior to joining TGen, Dave was the State Epidemiologist for Arizona where he was responsible for coordinating outbreak investigations and disease research activities statewide. From 2000 to 2005, Dave was also the Arizona Biodefense Coordinator, responsible for coordinating all state-wide activities regarding public health emergency preparedness and response, including response activities to suspect biothreat events, such as the suspicious powders that were seen following the anthrax letter attacks. He also served as statewide coordinator for Pandemic Influenza and other public health emergency response activities. Prior to 2000, Dave was a biologist for the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he conducted research on highly infectious diseases like plague and tularemia.

Dave has over 170 peer-reviewed publications, garnering over 10,000 citations and has over two dozen patented inventions. Dave received a Ph.D. in Biology from Northern Arizona University with a focus on genomic epidemiology, and a Master’s Degree in Microbiology from Colorado State University, where he studied host-vector-pathogen dynamics.